Today the temperature got up to 30f so let's do some shooting! 
Thus far I have been good about exploring how the Cricket II shot as delivered. Well today I finally tested and graphed the gun's behavior at various hammer spring settings. I found the adjustment range pretty impressive. I got total of 8 turns of adjustment which gave me a velocity range of 276 fps with JSB 18s.
I included an extra column in this sheet (column a on the left) because I didn't turn it so far in as to hit coil bind on the high side nor did I totally unscrew the adjuster either. So I struggled trying to figure out where to start counting my turns from. I decided that I'd use the setting that the gun was delivered with as my baseline (this is "0" in left column "A" and "7" in column "B"). It looks like this... the threads are just hidden inside the receiver. And you'll also see a small strip of tape I put on the adjuster to help me keep track of my turns.
I only increased the tension in my testing one in turn higher from here (listed as "8" on my graph). The velocity was clearly plateauing here with JSB 18s. FWIW, I also shot some JSB Monster Redesigned at this highest hammer spring tension. They shot at 863 fps giving about 42 fpe.
I went up and down with these adjustments a couple of times and the gun seemed pretty consistent at each turn setting. I did notice that once you got more than 2 or 3 turns down from my delivery baseline setting that the gun would shoot an occasional low velocity shot. Again the temperature was kind of chilly at 30f and I still think there's some excess lubrication on the HS that I need to address when shooting out in the cold. I did not see low velocity shots at the tighter hammer spring settings.
I also shot some lighter pellets on the lowest hammer spring setting to see how they would perform. And the JSB Express 14.3s did surprisingly well at 770 fps (19 fpe). Here's a group of 5 at 53 yards. The stickers I use are 1/2 inch.
Oh, here's a pic of the tightest HS setting (plus 1 or 8 turns in from the loosest setting). Ignore the sticker, I eventually removed it:
After 100+ fun shots of testing I got cold and am leaving the adjustments here for the time being (-3 turns or 4 turns in from the loosest setting):
So it's pretty cool that I can take this gun from about 19 fpe with the lighter JSBs all the way up to 42 fpe with the heaviest JSBs
Here are some fun pics to go along...
Messy targets:
Related Posts:
Thus far I have been good about exploring how the Cricket II shot as delivered. Well today I finally tested and graphed the gun's behavior at various hammer spring settings. I found the adjustment range pretty impressive. I got total of 8 turns of adjustment which gave me a velocity range of 276 fps with JSB 18s.
I included an extra column in this sheet (column a on the left) because I didn't turn it so far in as to hit coil bind on the high side nor did I totally unscrew the adjuster either. So I struggled trying to figure out where to start counting my turns from. I decided that I'd use the setting that the gun was delivered with as my baseline (this is "0" in left column "A" and "7" in column "B"). It looks like this... the threads are just hidden inside the receiver. And you'll also see a small strip of tape I put on the adjuster to help me keep track of my turns.
I only increased the tension in my testing one in turn higher from here (listed as "8" on my graph). The velocity was clearly plateauing here with JSB 18s. FWIW, I also shot some JSB Monster Redesigned at this highest hammer spring tension. They shot at 863 fps giving about 42 fpe.
I went up and down with these adjustments a couple of times and the gun seemed pretty consistent at each turn setting. I did notice that once you got more than 2 or 3 turns down from my delivery baseline setting that the gun would shoot an occasional low velocity shot. Again the temperature was kind of chilly at 30f and I still think there's some excess lubrication on the HS that I need to address when shooting out in the cold. I did not see low velocity shots at the tighter hammer spring settings.
I also shot some lighter pellets on the lowest hammer spring setting to see how they would perform. And the JSB Express 14.3s did surprisingly well at 770 fps (19 fpe). Here's a group of 5 at 53 yards. The stickers I use are 1/2 inch.
Oh, here's a pic of the tightest HS setting (plus 1 or 8 turns in from the loosest setting). Ignore the sticker, I eventually removed it:
After 100+ fun shots of testing I got cold and am leaving the adjustments here for the time being (-3 turns or 4 turns in from the loosest setting):
So it's pretty cool that I can take this gun from about 19 fpe with the lighter JSBs all the way up to 42 fpe with the heaviest JSBs
Here are some fun pics to go along...
Messy targets:
Related Posts:
